Practice Your Scales… But Which Ones?

Q: Scales… everyone should practice scales. But which scales? For someone that’s beginning to play or even some that has been playing for a long time, this can be a dilemma. How do you practice them? How do you implement them in your playing?

A: Great question. Of course, everyone should know their:

1. Major scales

2. Minor scales

…as a bare minimum. All arpeggios, chords and scales you will use or learn will be built using the major or minor scale as a reference point.

I’d also suggest that you learn all of the Major scale modes. Modes are just the scale but starting from a note other than the root. For example, play a the notes of a C Major scale, but starting and ending on D. That’s the second mode of C Major, which is “Dorian” mode.

Beyond that, it really depends on what kind of music you want to play and if you want to solo like a jazz guy, like a blues guy, and so on.

If you don’t care about bass solos, you’ll probably be just fine with Major mode scale knowledge. If you want to study jazz and learn to shred like any number of guys you see on Youtube, than you probably want to dig deeper than that.

Personally, I’m more about chord scales. I look at a chord symbol and build the notes I’ll use specifically around the notes inherent to that chord.

For example: If I see an A7(b13)

I’ll play the notes of the chord tones (1 3 5 b7), and the rest of my scale around what the chord tells me (2 4 b6). And there’s my scale:

1 2 3 4 5 b6 b7 8

or

A B C# D E F G A

All of those numbers are in reference to the Major scale degrees.

Also, when you look at a chord and you see a number over 7, you can simply subtract 7 from it and you have the scale degree.

9 – 7 = 2

11 – 7 = 4

13 – 7 = 6

This is because there are 7 notes in the scale. If you built it up over two octaves and continued to count scale degrees, you’d get this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

or

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C

I would strive to get very comfortable with all of your arpeggios and you major scale modes. Then practice playing over changes a lot. The system that works for you will reveal itself in no time. The key is getting the ball rolling and drilling the information enough that it becomes second nature.

If you want to know this stuff and apply it in more of a funk or blues way, you can really just work the pentatonic scales and work them that way. Essentially, it really depends on what kind of sound you are going for.

If you ask yourself, “do I really need to know this?”, your answer should simply be, “How good do I want to be?”

You get as much out of it as you put into it. Assess what your goals are for the instrument and work as hard as you can to move in that direction.

If you just want to be able to jam, you probably don’t need to spend years on chord changes.

Share your thoughts

Great article. My students get a very similar story from me when I’m quizzed about scales. The only scale missing here that is essential to any bass player’s bag of tricks is the Blues Scale. Most of the great riffs come from it, it is applicable to simple solo ideas and works across so many genres. Perhaps you could outline it in a future article Damien?
Peace & Bass

@Daniel @Blake
Actually, I think the blues scale is slightly different from the regular pentatonic. It’s essentially a pentatonic with the addition of a “blue note”. the minor blues scale is the minor pentatonic with a b5 and natural5
i THINK… I actually never learned my blues scales or pentatonic scales when I was developing and went straight to the 7 note scales. But, I also always had a hard time soloing over blues and funk because I was so accustomed to landing on “jazzier” sounding notes. The pentatonic and/or blues scales are immensely useful in certain situations (and ditching the 9’s & 13’s)

Good idea on the article on different modes, scales and applications. I’ll get on it!